What is contemplative computing?

Contemplative computing may sound like an oxymoron, but it's really quite simple. It's about how to use information technologies and social media so they're not endlessly distracting and demanding, but instead help us be more mindful, focused and creative.

About Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

I write about people, technology, and the worlds they make.

My book on contemplative computing, The Distraction Addiction, was published by Little, Brown and Company in 2013. (It's been translated into Dutch (as Verslaafd aan afleiding) and Spanish (as Enamorados de la Distracción); Russian, Chinese and Korean translations are in the works.)

My next book, Rest: Why Working Less Gets More Done, is under contract with Basic Books. Until it's out, you can follow my thinking about deliberate rest, creativity, and productivity on the project Web site.

Why Flappy Birds had to die: "it happened to become an addictive product"

I missed the whole Flappy Birds phenomenon; I played Angry Birds for a while but gave it up, and now pretty much the only games I ever play on my computer are Doom (very old school) and Osmos (very new school). So I wasn't particularly interested in the fact that the game had been shut down, until I saw this interview with creator Dong Nguyen:

Flappy Bird was designed to play in a few minutes when you are relaxed.... But it happened to become an addictive product. I think it has become a problem. To solve that problem, it’s best to take down Flappy Bird. It’s gone forever.

So Dong Nguyen, who was making as much as $50,000 a day in in-app advertisements, decides to pull the plug because of worries over the impact on his players. (He has other games on the iOS store but, Forbes says, if "he thought users were getting addicted, however, he said he would not hesitate to also take them down.")

I would love to send him a copy of my book as a thank-you. And I hope that other game and social companies take a second and ask themselves whether dopamine addiction is really the best business model they can come up with.

I'm fascinated by this story, though I get the sense from the articles I've read that while the addictive nature of the game was part of his motivation, he was also getting a ton of unwanted attention from the press and critics (including death threats) – so there may also simply be a desire on his part to dial down the noise in his own life. I might make the argument, actually, that the "addictive"/obsessive behaviour of fans/users was disrupting Nguyen's ability to live his life in peace - which is interesting, given that we usually focus on how distracted/compulsive use of tech has negative impacts on the user, rather than the impacts on those around him or her – even if they live on the other side of the globe.